Me, waking you up at two am: hey, do you ever think about how we live in a culture of rejecting our local “wild places” in favor of fetishizing and romanticizing the distant and different?
There’s this overwhelming rhetoric we’re fed that the only nature worth protecting is Grand and Huge and most of all Somewhere Else.
Nobody thinks about the wetland behind their local Walmart that is in Desperate need of protection, or the little remnant prairie in a cemetery, because they’re too focused on the abstract and often flawed concept of “wilderness” somewhere else.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to travel to see something new and unique, but the way I hear people talk about our own backyard, the way the last remnants of what we have here are ignored or outright rejected, breaks my heart.
My professor has spent his entire career in the Midwest trying to protect wetlands from housing developments and new superstores, but he almsot always loses, not just because the developers have money, but the community doesn’t care enough to do anything about it.
Afterall, what’s a few old oak and birch trees in a little puddle of a swamp compared to miles of marsh in Scandinavia? What’s a grassy hill to a distant mountain range?
Well, to the duck, to the heron, to the bluebird, and to precious few people, I’d say it’s Everything.
I love to travel myself, and I know people probably don’t know that when they say “why is our wildlife/plant life etc. so lame” that they’re contributing to an attitude of rejecting what unique beauty we do have,
But
I hope one day people can see the wonder nearby and fight to protect it. I hope there’s something left to protect.
Anyway…..where do u keep your cups I want some water.
so apparently Minecraft did this thing where people submitted their own builds to be made into steel structures that would be used to regrow coral in coral reefs, and one of the ones that got selected is a fishwolf, so now there is an actual physical minecraft wolf mermaid hybrid at the bottom of the ocean saving the coral reefs and i am living
Cute mammals, protected from cats now. See photos.
A critically endangered mala or rufous hare wallaby in the feral predator-proof fenced area on Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary. Photograph: Wayne Lawler/Australian Wildlife Conservancy
Excerpt:
The world’s largest cat-proof fence has been completed in central Australia, creating a 94 square kilometre sanctuary for endangered marsupials.
The 44km fence – made of 85,000 pickets, 400km of wire and 130km of netting – surrounds the Newhaven wildlife sanctuary, a former cattle station that has been bought by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy.
Endangered species such as the bilby, the burrowing bettong and the mala (also known as the rufous hare-wallaby) will have a chance to replenish their populations inside the massive sanctuary, safe from Australia’s feral cat epidemic.
Feral cats kill a million native birds every night across Australia and have caused the extinction of 20 native species since they were introduced by the first fleet.
Bilby
Burrowing bettong
And people still doubt that cats are problem animals somehow
Keep your cats inside. Stop adding to the problem.
Bristol Bay, home to half the world’s Sockeye salmon population, is about to be destroyed.
“For more than 15 years, Northern Dynasty
Minerals, a Canadian mining company, has sought to build a gold and
copper mine in Bristol Bay. And this spring, the Trump administration
took swift action to make that prospect more likely. Environmental
Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt met on May 1 with the CEO of the
Pebble Limited Partnership, a subsidiary of the mining company, CNN reported on September 22
based on interviews and government emails. Little more than an hour
later, according to internal emails, the administrator directed his
staff to reverse Obama-era protections for Bristol Bay, which had been
created after years of scientific review. Based on that work, the
previous administration had aimed to pre-emptively veto certain mining
activities in the ecologically important region.” (Src)
If this mine goes through: Thousands of jobs will be lost, an entire ecosystem will be destroyed and the world’s Sockeye salmon population will be decimated.
honestly it annoys the heck out of me when the discussion of palm oil comes up, people only talk about orangutans. i mean, YES, orangutans are really close to losing all their habitat.
but…have you thought about the fact that by cutting down these trees you’re destroying an entire forest, with SO many different (also close to extinction) animals, plants, insects,
an entire ecosystem that has existed for 55 million years?
i feel for orangutans but we’re talking about cutting the lungs of the earth here.
ALRIGHT MY FRIEND I have received about six messages in this vein since yesterday, but I worked for thirteen hours today and I have no time for this nonsense. Short answer: YES.
I’m gonna summarize some salient points on why pandas are awful from a conservation standpoint:
PANDAS LITERALLY CANNOT MATE IN CAPTIVITY. IT’S UNBELIEVABLE
Artificial insemination and hand-rearing of cubs are basically standard practice, and still they usually die. At what point is it reasonable to give up because I think we hit it DECADES AGO
In 35 years, only 90 cubs have been born in captivity outside of China
Wild panda numbers have increased a bare (bear?) 200 individuals in 10 years, despite literal billions of dollars being poured into conservation
NO OTHER AREA OF ANIMAL CONSERVATION EVEN COMES CLOSE TO THE MONEY BEING POURED INTO PANDAS. NONE
And yet we’ve managed to literally rebuild populations of black-footed ferrets, oryx, and California condors with exponentially less money
Despite all of this, only 10 pandas have been released since the 80s, and all but two died
I bet you wouldn’t have guessed that it’s because their habitat is destroyed and fragmentary and barely protected!!!!!!
The only good thing about panda conservation is that protecting their range is also protecting tons of other species. Which would be great, if more of their range was being protected effectively.
There is way more money in keeping captive pandas captive than in releasing them!! surprise!!!!!!
Zoos pay a lot of money to get pandas on loan because people just LOVE looking at pandas and they can’t afford to house and care for their other animals without people coming to visit! Or do any kind of conservation whatsoever!! Panda-economics! (this is kind of a pro as opposed to a con but its the kind of pro that makes me feel like I need a shower)
Pandas are endangered and sort of have a role in spreading bamboo seeds around, so they get billions of dollars. Every shark ever is MORE endangered, and without them the entire ocean ecosystem would collapse, but that’s fine they don’t need money (I’m not bitter) ((I am bitter))
I’m gonna be frank with you. We are in the middle of a mass extinction event, caused by us. Not to be a downer (jk, I’m gonna) but we’re already driving so many species to extinction that we cannot afford to save them all with the money and interest that is in conservation right now.
Instead, we have to do some kind of awful extinction triage and assess which animals will do the most good to work to conserve – and getting into keystone species, ecosystem engineers, and other truly integral species is a whole other can of worms I’m not gonna touch on – but there are animals that are “more important” in a certain sense than others, in that they can support or affect a much wider range of other species than another.
People only care about big, cute, fluffy animals – a common lament heard from conservationists, but it’s so true. There are thousands, if not millions of species that don’t fit this mold that conservation work would benefit eons more than pandas. It’s like fixing a pretty, stained-glass window in a house whose foundations are collapsing and thinking you’re helping.
Pandas have always been the face of conservation, and they continue to be one of the biggest and most expensive ongoing failures.
[Sources/ stuff to read to make sense of my incoherent response!]
I like pandas, they’re cute. In an ideal world, sure, I’d love to see energy put into keeping them on this planet for us to coo over. Unfortunately, we’ve got limited energy and limited resources and I really think that we need to focus on conserving species that play a more critical role in their environments, rather than on cute megafauna that don’t do much more than chew on weird grass.
I read this post a while ago about Panda Conservation that cleared up the reasons why it’s a waste of money
You are so very wrong. Without the expertise, staff, and actions of zoos there are many species that would already be extinct. Besides direct involvement in breeding and releasing, there are research teams, veterinarians, and full time conservationists all working at the best zoos. Your comment reminds me that we have a lot of work to do with public relations, more than anything else.
I see this and think of my friend who spent the last week posting videos from a survey of wild Black Footed Ferrets through his facility: a species that was down to 12 individuals and thought to be extinct, bred back through ultra-careful management into populations stable enough for reintroduction in the Midwest.
Zoos do so much, but much of it is unglamorous and underrepresented in their messaging.
Posts like this make me think of my boss, who is one of the original team members for the SECORE project which is studying coral spawning and sexual reproduction and recently came up with a method of “sewing” thousands of settled coral larva like seeds on devestated reefs. There is government funding for the project as a whole, but it wouldn’t be possible without the support, funding and hard work put in by the zoos and aquariums.
I think what can be hard to ‘see’ is the idea that animals in zoos are bred and/or only kept in zoos. Except, zoos have off exhibit animals.
‘Recently’ my state’s zoo had Panamanian Golden Tree Frogs put on exhibit. They didn’t just arrive. They were there for much longer. I don’t know for how long. They were off exhibit, for quarantine, but also for studying and conservation purposes. That colony is used for breeding so that the species may survive.
But that’s just it. As public, one doesn’t see these things.
They may see the old circus elephant, who sways. Or the blinded seal who cannot return to the wild. Or they see the primates, colonies bred in zoos, but aren’t destined to be released into the wild–those used for education in zoos.
What’s the alternative? Take them then from the wild? That’s worse. Better to have a zoo-based colony. It’s not bad for conservation, either. One bird species I was reading about was critically endangered. One of the individuals was held in a zoo; he had NO genetic relation whatsoever to any of other surviving population. He was EXTREMELY valuable for the species survival program. It wasn’t zoos that caused issue to his species. It was poaching, egg collecting, various environmental poisonings, etc. One contributor that was educational based: museum stuffing. It’s better to have an alive bird than a dead one. It’s still critically endangered, but that’s better than where it was.
The other alternative? Shutting zoos down entirely? An even worse prospect.
Zoos have two great prime functions: education and entertainment. It’s a problem: people don’t care about what they don’t know. People don’t care about that which has nothing to do with themselves. Forming connections is necessary for our planet. For many, leaving a city, a state, or the country isn’t possible. The zoo provides a really easy way for people to form worldwide connection and interest without leaving their city. That connection can help fuel interest in reducing plastics or water pollution.
A role of the zoo is never “finished.” Much like a hospital, really. You don’t run a hospital in hopes that one day, its unnecessary. It is necessary. Full stop. It will always be necessary. We may seek to lessen than necessity or to prevent some really stupid reasons it becomes necessary… but it will always exist for a reason. Zoos are necessary.
Even on a human front, zoos are important. I didn’t expect to work at a zoo and think “ah, yes, a service to humanity.” I was thinking “I don’t like humans much… but I love animals!”
I was wrong. The amount of happiness it brings people. The peace. The fresh air. Are people dicks and try to feed monkeys cheetos? Yes, and I will remain angry with them. But there’s a lot of good too. It can form interesting community bonding, like when EVERYONE wanted photos of the jaguars, but the jaguars wouldn’t stop fucking. It became a social hilarity. Someone tries to take a photo? No. The male has mounted the female. No one wants a selfie with some jaguars fucking in the background (I guess).
PiraticOctopus 